


rib cages like cathedrals

by mybrainproblems



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel's True Form (Supernatural), Cooking, Eating, Extended Metaphors, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, Monsterfucking, No editing we die like mne, Possessive Behavior, Softcore Porn, Softvore Pornography, if anyone has tag suggestions i'm all ears bc this got frickin weird, supernatural is fundamentally about hunger and we are the voyeurs ergo it is softvore pornography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-28 00:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30131232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybrainproblems/pseuds/mybrainproblems
Summary: He wants to take him into the needy maw at the core of his being, to devour him into the very center of his existence. And to humans this might be a contradiction, but Cas is ancient and exists on many planes, in many dimensions. To consume, to be consumed – it is the same all-ravaging and all-devouring love.Cas has thousands of eyes that want to stare at Dean and Dean wants to be stared at by all of them.I genuinely have no idea how to explain this fic. It's monsterfucking but mostly skin and tender touches and metaphorical voids filled. They want to consume each other physically but mostly metaphorically. They are creatures of hunger and love and softness.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	rib cages like cathedrals

**Author's Note:**

> Didn't intend to break my two year writing hiatus with something this weird and definitely didn't mean for something this weird to be my first entry into a fandom but the beginning section popped from my head fully formed like Athena from Zeus' skull while I was trying to decide between salsas at the grocery.
> 
> This also got weirder and more metaphorical than I initially planned.
> 
> I have zero justification for why Dean can see Cas' true form other than I have seen so much cool trueform!Cas art and I wanted to write this. Maybe they're in heaven after living a full life together on Earth. Don't pull that thread too hard.

It’s a dance.

Though Dean doesn’t remember the last time he really, truly danced – just that it was before the apocalypse. Which apocalypse? Well, that’s a loaded question now, isn’t it? (Was it before the angel? An even more loaded one.)

And Cas. Cas remembers a time that Dean had drunkenly whirled him around the bunker library, but that was years ago. And they never did talk about that the next day like they meant to. Or said they meant to.

But this is their dance.

Dean who cooks, Dean who eats.

Cas who plates, Cas who watches.

Dean; edible, touchable.

Cas; hands, teeth, lips, tongue, eyes, wings, talons greedy.

Both hungry.

It’s a ritual.

Dean cooks dinner; hands sure as he slices, brow furrowed as he glances at recipes. Cas watches, no bend of wrist or flutter of pulse or neuronal impulse escaping his notice. What point is there in having thousands of eyes if he doesn’t use them to see every molecule of Dean Winchester. And Dean doesn’t realize it, but he’s pinned under the weight of those thousands of eyes, revered and desired and unaware.

As usual, when Dean is finished cooking, he takes a seat at the table and Cas plates the food. And Cas wishes he could cook for Dean but they’ve tried that more than once and more than once it has ended up inedible. And so now this.

Dean cooks and Cas plates.

Dean eats and Cas watches.

Cas has mentioned wanting to learn how to cook before, but Dean loves to cook for the ones he loves, and Cas loves to watch the ones he loves actually _eat_. So this is their compromise – Dean may cook but Cas knows a thousand ways to plate foods to make them more visually appealing. And it _is_ satisfying to watch Dean break down the art he has created on the plate. To dedicate a few hundred eyes to his hands, another thousand eyes to his mouth. The others scattering around and wandering over Dean’s body taking everything in and letting no cell go unobserved.

But to Dean there are only two eyes that he can see, only two eyes that _matter_ in this whole ritual. To be flayed open under their weighty blue gaze. There’s an alien intensity to it – unblinking and focused – that unnerves some people but that Dean finds to be more like a heavy blanket in the winter. It’s an unwavering gaze of love. Of want. Of need.

 _“I’m an angel. I can stop any time I want.”  
_ How many years has it been since then?  
Has he _ever_ stopped?

And so they eat together. Dean eats the food that he cooks and Cas plates, and Cas watches – thirst never slaked and hunger never satiated. (That’s not the _point_.) They briefly tried sitting down to eat together, Cas serving himself a plate of something that tasted like molecules no matter what it looked like, but after the second time with lips pursed and a barely-there-frown, Dean had moved his plate to the side and said he didn’t have to eat to join him. That he could just sit with him. Could talk. Could _watch_.

It’s foreplay.

Watching Dean eat awakens the cavernous hunger at the very center of Cas’ existence. It’s always there; a steady pulse in his vessel, a constant whir in his rings, a ruffle in his feathers and he can keep it at bay, keep it from being all-consuming. He used to try and stifle that hungry void with _God_ or at least the _idea_ of their heavenly father. With _obedience_ , with _purpose_. But even when he became his own god – full with every denizen of Purgatory – it was a void that had gone unfilled. And here with Dean, he allows that hunger to open up its yearning maw and enjoys the feeling of it stretching and unfolding like his own wings.

The point of dinner is not to be sated; it is to be whetted.

It’s worship.

Dean knows. He _knows_ how Cas looks at him. The shorter looks he gets during the day are no less intense than the one he gets throughout dinner, but the unblinking and unending magnitude of it is its own added weight. It’s the feeling of being possessed in every way but one, knowing that this eternity-old wavelength of celestial intent has for some unfathomable reason chosen to be with _him_ in every way bar none.

That Cas doesn’t eat had been awkward at first. He could see on his face that eating wasn’t enjoyable (he still wonders what molecules taste like), but he still wanted the company. He wanted that weighty stare on him at all times, to have it press on every inch of his body. To have it pin him down and fill him, licking up his insides and burning him in the best way possible. An Enochian brand throughout his entire body – every bone, every tendon, every cell, claimed to the very marrow of his bones in the name of Castiel.

Claimed in love.

That they do the dishes together by hand is another part of the ritual. Dragging out the yearning,praying,longing,needing while remaining pressed against each other. Dean can almost feel where the messy voids inside of them grind up against each other, wailing friction resonating between them and quieting as they echo into their respective voids. It is peaceful; it is slow; it is the sharp scent of dish soap; it is the gentle rhythm of scrub, rinse, dry, stack. Cas elbow deep in sudsy hot water and Dean at the ready with a dishtowel, fingers brushing electric as dishes are handed off. And it is in that yearning peaceful rhythm that hunger, now whetted, is peaked.

A gentle kiss as the last plate is stacked. A deeper kiss to follow. The demanding friction of hungry abyss to hungry abyss as Cas backs Dean up against the counter, hands under his shirt and resting on his hips – pressing and pressing and pressing their bodies together. He wants to fill the void inside of Dean, to claim and be claimed by that yielding void. He wants to take him into the needy maw at the core of his being, to devour him into the very center of his existence. And to humans this might be a contradiction, but Cas is ancient and exists on many planes, in many dimensions. To consume, to be consumed – it is the same all-ravaging and all-devouring love.

Castiel remembers the feeling of becoming a god _for Dean_. (for the Winchesters, he’d said – always happy to bleed for the Winchesters)

He remembers the powerful need to create, to destroy. The endlessly writhing mass of souls inside of him.

Creation? Destruction? It doesn’t compare to this.

Dean allows himself to be pushed back onto the bed, his body new-corpse limp and marrow sucked dry. And he wouldn’t have allowed this before – to be tossed around and treated like a thing to be owned, to hand himself over like this so completely and so willingly. Oh, but this is Cas. This is Castiel. This is _Cas_. And he will let him take every wanton part of him, will yield to Cas and take him in to fill the abyss in his chest, to know that he possesses as much as he is possessed by. The angel is his and he is the angel’s. It’s a gasping, heady high like no other.

His abyss stares into another and the other stares back – heated-blue and deliciously suffocating.

He watches as Cas unwraps him layer by layer; pressing himself up on his elbows for a kiss as his flannel is pulled off, lifting his hips as his jeans are stripped down, the electrifying friction of cotton on flesh. And it’s only now when he’s laid bare that he reciprocates undressing Cas, unbuttoning and unzipping and pushing and pulling at fabric until he too is laid bare. Skin to skin, flesh to flesh, oh and mouths and lips and hands and tongues and teeth. Gasps and sighs and moans and shuddering breaths. And withdrawal –

“Dean,” Cas is sitting up now, straddling him and Dean can see the flush of his teeth on Cas’ neck and shoulders and chest and knows that it’s a mirror of his own. “Close your eyes. Don’t open them until I say.”

And he does. Not because he is dutiful or obedient, but because he has _faith_.

There is a blinding burn of light on the other side of his eyelids. White hot heat on his skin and the snapping whoosh of feathers and the sound of otherworldly bells. The air is made of ozone and petrichor and creosote and fire and brimstone and it's thick enough to taste. It’s the same scent as a smiting and it’s gone in an instant along with the light, only a faint waft lingering in the air.

“You can open your eyes now.”

Cas’ human form is there, solid and still pressing down on him, still looking bitten and mussed. But around him – oh, around _him_. Around _them_.

There are the impressions of iridescent wings, sharp talons, creatures’ heads, rings spinning lazily – all of it lit up in soft blue-white light with tendrils and feathers gently touching him. And there are _eyes_. And every single one of them is focused on him.

Dean tries to take it all in. He thinks there might be a deer’s head or an anetelope’s above Cas’ own human one but it’s bathed in shadow. Massive spiraling wings; feathers slick-dark-rainbow like oil, some laying sleek and smooth and others bent and burnt, skeletal bones warping underneath. The whirring bell-like call of rings; scratched and singing dull and dented gold. The blue-white fire of grace; emanating off in beams, dripping and pooling within and glowing tendrils of light sneaking out. Pinned under the gaze of a thousand eyes; some bruised and bloodied, some clear and incomprehensible colors, some clouded milky cataract blind and absolutely _everywhere_.

There was something shrieking and clawing up in the back of his throat, in his skull – a sickness, a mad laugh, joy and grief and pain and pleasure and all-too-much welling up into his chest as he tried to take everything in. And every time he thought he could fully perceive some part of Cas, his own two eyes (only two!) went skittering back to Cas’ human form, sliding away back to the comprehensible and quieting the clawing shrieking something.

“Careful.” Cas’ voice is still gravel-worn but there’s more to it now. There’s an otherworldly melody to it and Dean can feel it echo and rumble like a thunderstorm in his chest. Cas smirks, “be not afraid.”

“It’s –” Dean swallows and focuses on Cas’ human face, taking a deep breath and quieting the madness bubbling up. _Beautiful? Awe-inspiring? Exhilarating? Terrifying? Ugly? Nauseating?_ Tendrils of grace rest gently against his skin and wings draw in around them. “Hot as hell.”

He doesn’t see, so much as he _feels_ Cas clamor and ring and roar. Feathers rustling and grating like knives as his wings flutter. And it’s _pride_. It’s love, it’s joy, it’s an angel’s laughter. It doesn’t matter that every light in their home has shattered when fiery grace lights the room.

“You know,” and Dean is still amazed that he’s allowed to do this with this incomprehensibly ancient being, “you’re a bit smaller than you said.”

“Dean.” Cas’ tone is exasperated and fond and it’s so much better when he can see and feel every eye fixed on him. “This is… drastically scaled down. Simplified. You’d go insane if I tried to manifest my full true form.”

“And the Chrysler building probably wouldn’t fit in our bedroom, would it?” Dean grins and slides his hands down from Cas’ hips to rest on his thighs.

“Not in this dimension, no.”

Dean brought one of his hands up, reaching to cup Cas’ stubbled human jaw with his own callous palm. They stayed for a moment, frozen and staring at one another, Dean cradled in the maelstrom that was Cas. Until finally they moved as one, Dean gently pulling Cas down and Cas following – lips and teeth and tongue, all in the eye of a storm. And Dean’s other hand was still on Cas’ thigh and it would be easy to shift slightly and take them both in hand like he might on any other night. But tonight, but now… He swallowed and pressed himself up into Cas, his free hand shifting from thigh to hip to trail up his spine, Cas shuddering under his hands until –

His hand was brushing something unknowable. Razor sharp and downy soft, chittering and shaking as he smoothed the feathers of Cas’ wing. He could feel the soft skin of eyelids and the brush of eyelashes as the eyes among the feathers closed under his touch. Through his own closed eyelids he could see the glow from Cas’ grace becoming brighter, human moans and breathy sighs mixing with soft bells and a low chirring melody like crickets. It was a cacophony of contentment and desire and Dean was at the very heart of it.

They broke apart, Cas resting his forehead on Dean’s as he slowly breathed. Dean continued to stroke at the wing, the feeling of feathers being dagger sharp and yielding soft and the odd feel of eyelids fluttering as he brushed over them. Touching felt a little less like insanity, able to limit his perception of Cas to a more human scale. He could feel Cas’ human hands on him grounding him, one cupping his cheek and mirroring his own and the other snaked under his shoulder to cradle his head. He felt a slight tug at the hand cradling Cas’ jaw, thumb gently nudged off of his cheekbone and –

Dean’s eyes snapped open.

There was a tendril of blue-white grace wrapped around his hand, its touch oh-so-soft and warm. Gentle as it laced between his fingers, slotting between the gaps and feeling as solid as any human hand. His skin glowing almost ethereal where it touches. And drawn in around them are Cas’ wings – a feathered cocoon of eyes and the occasional flash of rings. The chirring sound, he realized, was coming from the feathers as he watched them shiver and vibrate against each other. He had to close his eyes again, swallow down the madness and the nausea rising up even as he lay content and beloved within his angel’s very being.

“I’m sorry, Dean. It’s… a lot. For humans.” They were so close that Dean could feel the words, lips brushing together.

“It’s fine, Cas. It’s –” He inhaled sharply as he felt another tendril of grace touch the hand he was using to pet Cas’ wing, winding its way around his wrist in a loose hold like a bracelet. “Touching is nice.”

“Mm.” Cas shifted to place a kiss on his neck just below his ear and Dean could feel the soft drag of grace along his skin.

“Can I touch your rings?” He felt Cas stop moving, unbreathing body as still as a statue.

“That… might not be wise.”

“Why not?” Dean opened his eyes again, focusing on Cas’ face. On the way he was becoming less solid, lines of his body almost blurring into everything else. There was a crumpled seriousness to his expression – concern slowly worn down by desire, by hunger. He gave the tendrils of grace wrapped between his fingers a reassuring squeeze and watched the pretense fall from Cas’ face, replaced by open want. “I trust you.”

“Okay.” The grace between his fingers pulled at his hand to stretch his arm, he watched through half-closed eyes as Cas’ wing seemed to stretch as well, bowing out and creating a new cavernous space. “Do _not_ move your hand. I’ll guide you.”

He closed his eyes, swallowing down everything bubbling up and let his hand and fingers be pliant to Cas. To be malleable to his suggestion. He opened his eyes again to see a barely-perceptible slash of dull gold, the very air around it a shimmering mirage like heat rising from summer blacktop. He let his hand be moved, to be inched towards that heat shimmer and could feel the tolling peal of old bells as his fingertips drew closer until they were brushing that warped heat mirage emanating from the gold. And it was only an infinitesimal twitch of his finger as it connected but he could feel it nearly cut to the bone, grace wrapping around and healing before the pain even registered.

“They’re _sharp_?!”

“I told you not to move.” A kiss pressed to Dean’s cheek. The apologetic caress of his grace on Dean’s hand.

“So that shimmer is what… knives?”

“Something like that.”

“Is the ring sharp too?”

“No.” A kiss to his forehead. Dean relaxed his hand in the grasp of Cas’ grace.

“I want to try again.” He felt Cas' thoughtful hum through his body.

“Okay.”

Dean let his arm go completely limp, giving Cas full control to move his hand through the flesh-carving shimmer. It struck him as funny – feathers that looked and felt like knives but also pillow soft, and the most dangerous part of Cas looked like a gentle heat mirage radiating off of scuffed gold rings.

The peal of old bells grew louder as his hand drew closer to the ring itself, clamoring inside his head as his fingers hovered mere millimeters above the ring. Or maybe it was miles… his perception was starting to get muddled and skewed again.

 _“Take a breath.”_ The words were felt more than heard and he obeyed, inhaling deeply and exhaling as his fingers came into contact.

There was a final earthshattering bell toll and it felt like he was coming unglued at the seams of his very self. Everything around him expanding and contracting and writhing. In one moment he was perched on the tip of one of Cas’ feathers and knew every color by name and taste, in another he was a tear lingering on the eyelash of one of Cas’ human eyes. And he was watching the first fish crawl from the water and then on the edge of a lake of stars. He was sitting on the edge of one of the jagged heat shimmers surrounding Cas’ rings and finally settling inside the garden of his own soul.

And he could feel it now; his rib cage was the cathedral that Cas was building for them, his bones forming the vaulted ceiling and the light that was Cas streaming down through the stained glass of his sternum. Every breath raising the vaulted ceilings and opening up more space for more light and stained glass, Enochian sigils carved into his ribs glowing and light and sound welling up under his skin and deep inside of his bones and bells clamoring and –

Everything was normal again.

Or as normal as things could be with wings and eyes and swirling rings and what he was now pretty sure was a deer head with a lion’s mane above Cas’ human head. He thought he was starting to perceive other heads as well, but Dean’s eyes were already skittering away and he felt like his skull was ready to split open even as Cas tried to soothe him with his grace.

Dean closed his eyes and took many, _many_ deep breaths.

Cas stared at Dean, every eye worrying. He knew that touching his rings might be intense but he hadn’t been expecting _that_ reaction. And he worried, and he worried but – _god_ it had felt good. Dean’s hands on his wings, buried into his feathers and caressing the soft petal skin of his eyelids. His grace attuned to the gentle fluttering pulse under its tendrils as he wrapped himself visibly and invisibly around Dean’s everything. His rings though – that had been pure joy. To have Dean’s calloused human hands touch those battle-scarred weapons. Softness against violence. He had felt terror when he’d cut Dean, there was no way for him to know that Cas was guiding him through a forest of ethereal blades of light, each one retracting and bending away from the path of Dean’s hand. If he hadn’t been so _so_ focused on his task, Dean likely would have lost that hand.

But then Dean’s fingers had made contact with the scarred gold of his rings and it had felt like he was new again. That these weren’t just tools of war soaked with the blood of angels and demons and everything between. And it had felt delicious and shivery and for the first time since his creation, he’d felt so _full_ of everything. So _sated_.

_“When Castiel first laid a hand on you in hell, he was lost.”_  
And for this? For _Dean?_  
He would choose it again and again and again.

He knows down in the depths of his being that he isn’t permanently sated. That the hunger will creep back and claw its way into the core of his existence again. And he’ll watch Dean cook and Dean eat. He’ll plate food and sit across the table and turn every invisible eye onto him. To lick up his body with his grace when they’re in bed together.

Dean held him in the very core of his being. In the garden cathedral that Cas had built for his soul, built to shelter him from the maelstrom and show him just how beautiful he was inside. He was there inside of Dean too, consumed in every way even as he drew himself around Dean, wishing he could assimilate him into the center of his own being. Cas would enshrine him deep within himself – a beautiful glowing soul wreathed in feathers and rings and every eye turned inwards towards him.

Ah. And there was that hunger again.

He buries his face in Dean’s neck. Breathes in though he doesn't need to and smells the heat of him, listens to his pulse and feels the gentle puffs of breath on his neck. He stays still with him, sheltering the both of them loosely in his wings, retracting his grace and shushing and stilling the feathers and rings into a soft quietude. Only human skin touches human skin.

Finally, after many silently stretching minutes, Dean’s breathing changes from a measured inhale-exhale to a more natural pattern.

“Are you okay?” Cas turns his many eyes to Dean’s face even as he keeps his own human face buried in Dean’s neck.

“Yeah.” It’s rumbling and soft and Cas can feel it between their chests, sees the discomfort and the honesty in Dean’s expression. “It was just… a lot.”

“I should have warned you not to look at the same time.” A soft tendril of grace hovers just above Dean’s cheek, the light glowing over his eyelids and Cas wants to touch him – _needs_ to touch him – but right now he’s not sure how Dean is going to react to any angelic appendages. “I can put away my true form if you’d like.” He doesn’t _want_ to, but he’s touched Dean’s mind and he’s seen how disquieted it was.

“No.” Dean raises a lazy hand, and every molecule of Cas stills as Dean’s fingers brush that hovering tendril of grace and he twines it between his fingers. Cas can’t help the rustling clatter of his feathers or the low jingle as one of his rings spins. “This is nice.”

And Dean sighs happily as the tendrils wrap around his wrist and others come to rest against his skin. He brings his other hand up again, reaching blindly towards the feathered canopy just inches above them, Cas’ eyes closing sleepily as fingers brush over them.

Cas knows he has Dean at the very center of his existence, the core of the yearning void inside of him. And he knows he’ll be hungry again, but he also knows that Dean will be there too. That they both have these abysses inside of them and a need to consume and to be consumed by and it’s an all-encompassing _need_.

But they’re together – and they can hunger together

The point is not always to be satiated.

Sometimes it is to be whetted.

**Author's Note:**

> I knew that _eventually_ I was going to write some weird monsterfucker nonsense because Dean is canonically a monsterfucker and it's always a fun challenge to write this stuff but I didn't expect it to be the first thing I wrote. And then Mr. Krushnic comes out here talking about Cas watching dates lecherously as they eat.
> 
> If you want to pass along the weird, you can reblog the [ Tumblr link here.](https://mybrainproblems.tumblr.com/post/646134888624504832/rib-cages-like-cathedrals-ao3-link-rating-mature)


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